LONDON LETTER
125
had marshalled them with some indignation. Yet he was deadly.
The candidate, likewise marshalling facts, likewise indignant, gave
them a passionate urgency. It was not simply a question of tactics–
of not enough money for this, too much for that, of jobs done
badly and issues balked. It was, instead, a moral question of re–
sponsibility: of egotism versus impartiality, private interest or gen–
eral welfare. And all this was implied not by preaching but by a
certain fierceness of tone. He positively welcomed the hecklers,
turning on them eager and derisive until he had turned their jokes
against themselves and the audience was laughing. Then, in the
middle of the laughter the candidate's face would alter, the comers
of his mouth would drop like a tragic mask, and he would tum on
the interrupters with an air of tremendous moral outrage. "Laugh
if you must," was his implication, "but this is the kind of stupid
irresponsibility on which social chaos, injustice and malpractice
thrives." It was a brilliant performance.
The nearer Election Day drew, the more powerful the candi–
date became. Yet at the end of each question-time it became more
and more obvious that hardly anyone had really been listening. The
audience watched the performance enthusiastically enough, approv–
ing or disapproving according to their political colour. But the ar–
guments, however carefully worked out and lucidly presented,
seemed rarely to register. Occasionally there would be serious ques–
tions about the Labour programme, usually from workers at the
local aircraft factories who were worried by the threat of automa–
tion and redundancy. The rest of the questioners were of two kinds.
First there was a group of hecklers, about half a dozen of them,
who had presumably been sent out by the local Conservative Party
to make nuisances of themselves. They were led by a thin, grimly
respectable young man, like a Dickens clerk, with an upper-class
accent so carefully modulated that it sounded as though he spent
a good deal of time rehearsing it. His henchman was a loud,
bouncy youth with a red baby-face and black curls, like some
Pub–
lic School Dylan Thomas in sports clothes. Through every meeting,
he sucked avidly on a long, bamboo cigarette holder. These two
and their followers would appear in the middle of the meetings,
